


The Resistance

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: M/M, With all that entails, also some doodle dogtent, also though, and everyone else in the country, and letting that fuel them and make them stronger, as well as the psychological effects the end of liberal democracy would have on the boys, finding love in the darkest of places, including non-graphic discussions of the police brutality and prison violence, mental or physical, that a trump dictatorship would condone, the crumbling of our democracy into a Second Civil War, to lighten it up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 03:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 19,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15427554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: Ahead of the 2020 election, Donald Trump declares martial law and precipitates a second civil war.





	1. "I know this hurts"

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as two things: an overwhelmingly long and detailed idea in January and a single Tumblr prompt in June. It's ended up a fascinating experiment. Each chapter is a scene in what - if I was writing this traditionally - probably would have been an entire chapter of the fic.
> 
> Just to reiterate the tags: this is a dark fic - it takes Trump's erosion of democratic institutions to its (unfortunately) logical conclusions, how could it not be dark? - and it made me cry numerous times while writing it. So, apologies for that. It also does contain, not detailed but definite references to, police and prison violence as well as issues of PTSD and depression. HOWEVER, it is also hopeful and cathartic and rests on the power of love so, hopefully, dear reader, you find it as uplifting, in the end, as I do.
> 
> Finally, thank you to all the people who sent me Tumblr prompts for the hurt meme that jumpstarted this. And especially to Maddie, who helped me edit this whole thing and cried along with me most of the way <3

Lovett rolls his neck, feeling the sore joints crack and groan as he rests his head back against the couch. His eyes slip closed.

“I know this hurts,” Jon murmurs, spreading his arm along the back of the couch and squeezing Lovett’s neck, “but you have to stay awake. You- we- all of us have to watch this happen.”

“And if I can’t?” Lovett challenges. He slides his eyes open again, bloodshot from months of campaigning and weeks of rallies and protests and marches and hours of crying. Each less effective, at the end, than the last. “What if I can’t watch our country capitulate to the ravings of our worst person?”

“Then,” Tommy says from Lovett’s other side, his voice a little harsher than Jon hopes he means it to be, “we’ve already lost.”

“Open your eyes,” Lovett motions towards the TV screen that covers half of their living room wall. Leo flinches in Lovett’s lap, following the motion of his hand and shaking his ears out, before hiding his nose between Lovett’s thighs again. “We have already lost.”

“We haven’t.” Jon holds up his hand, scooting closer on the couch, squeezing Lovett’s neck one last time before stretching his arm to pinch Tommy’s shoulder. A warning, a reminder, of what they have at stake. He cuts Lovett off before either he or Tommy can form a protest. “No. No, we haven’t. We’ve lost this battle, certainly, but there’s a war coming and these are just the first shots fired.”

“And if it becomes an actual war-?”

It hangs between them. It’s a thought Jon’s had - they’ve all had, even Dan, whose voice has grown heavier in Jon’s headphones over the past few weeks, desperate around the thoughts he’s refused to voice, on or off air - over and over again in the six weeks since Trump first put forth his martial law bill in the House. Now that the bill is up for a vote, and now that the fear has been voiced, it’s no less sharp or true or dangerous than it had felt, bouncing frantically around Jon’s mind, leaving havoc in its wake.

“Then,” Tommy whispers, sliding his voice under the CNN panel, “we go to war.”

“Fuck.” Lovett breathes.

“And we win.”

Lovett stares at Tommy’s pale, determined face, then at Jon. Jon twists his fingers into Lucca’s fur. He nods.

Lovett chuckles, turning his head to rest against Jon’s arm. His breath is warm and rapid against Jon’s skin. “Your hope and optimism feel a little misplaced right now.”

“They’re the best bullets we have.”

Tommy snorts.

“Yeah,” Lovett agrees, darkly, “until we start stockpiling actual bullets.”

“Even then,” Jon promises. He pulls at Lovett shoulder until he shifts, falling sideways into Jon. Leo huffs, jumping out of Lovett’s lap and curling around Pundit on the other end of the couch. Lucca lifts her head from Jon’s thigh, but they spent the afternoon in the park and she stretches onto her back rather than moving. Someday, Jon thinks absently as he rubs her belly, she’ll realize that she’s twice the size of her siblings. Until then, he uses the excuse to shift closer to Lovett to give her space.

“Yeah,” Lovett says, again, on a deep, shuddering breath. He loosens against Jon’s body. “Yeah, okay.”

On the TV, Nancy Pelosi walks to the front of the chamber and casts a dangerous, lone “nay” vote.

“All kinds of bullets,” Lovett murmurs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please come find me on [Tumblr](http://stainyourhands.tumblr.com/)!


	2. "I got you"

Jon can’t see.

His eyes are red and crusty, tearing up as he peers through the smoke. It’s every way he turns, masses of bodies barely visible in the police-created fog, arms and legs and disembodied heads. He reaches down, instinctively, to catch a women’s elbow as she falls. He rights her, then turns, again.

“Lovett!” He calls. “Tommy!”

Screams answer him, but none of them are familiar.

He pulls his t-shirt over his mouth, a flimsy barrier against the tear gas, and continues to push his way to the stage.

It isn’t- the chance that Lovett is still there is small, but it was the last place Jon saw him. A short while and a lifetime ago, when Lovett had stood on that stage, dressed in a red March for Democracy t-shirt and a Friend of the Pod baseball hat, his nose already red from the sun. When Lovett’s fingers had shook, just a little, against his mic stand as he stood in front of over 500,00 people and spoke about civility and hope and the opportunity - even now, even just a few short days before Trump’s martial law bill is set to take effect - to make a difference.

Tommy had been standing next to Jon, their shoulders brushing as they clapped and whistled, off to the side where Tanya and Elijah were livestreaming on the last of their monthly bandwidth allowance. Jon hasn’t seen either of them since the moments after the speech, when Elijah had shaken his iPhone, said he needed to head back to the car to charge it. Jon hopes against hope that they made it out in time.

Jon pushes through the mass of bodies. He touches a few shoulders, waits until red, weepy eyes turn towards him and then motions at the way he’s holding his shirt over his mouth. But there’s too much chaos for him to do much of a difference.

A fitting metaphor, he figures, for this whole damn mess.

His heart flips when he sees a tuft of curls above the stage stairs. The stage is just a temporary thing, spreading the width of Grand Park, and it’s already falling apart where the riot police have ripped and torn at the soft wood. Someone is huddled behind what’s left of the stairs, though, surrounded by pieces of fallen wood and a palm tree stump.

Jon’s heart stops.

“Lovett?”

Lovett moves his head towards Jon’s voice, whispering, “Jon,” even though, as he looks up, Jon can see how crusted shut his eyes are. He has a long cut on his cheek and it’s weeping down his face.

“Fuck, Lovett, I thought I’d lost you.” Jon pushes the wood aside and reaches for Lovett, pulling him up by his forearms. Lovett winces, biting his lip to hold back a whimper.

“Don’t-” He whispers, but Jon ignores him, reaching for the hem of his shirt and raising it to show off a series of thick, nightstick sized bruises across Lovett’s ribcage.

“Fuck.” Jon’s eyes are burning, from the tear gas, from the image, and he lets Lovett’s shirt fall. He pulls Lovett into his chest, much more carefully, and holds him in the rubble of what they had hoped would be the last, great, liberal stand for democracy before the coming second civil war.

Lovett whines, but doesn’t move away.

“I got you,” Jon whispers, pressing a kiss behind Lovett’s ear. He tastes like chemicals and smoke. “It’s gonna be okay, you’re going to be okay.”

Lovett winces as he chuckles. “Sure, sure, we’re gonna be fine.”

“In Trump adjusted terms?”

“We need a new adjustment,” Lovett admits. He uses the hem of Jon’s shirt to dig into the corners of his eyes, where the chemicals are thickest. “Tommy?”

Jon swallows. “I don’t- we got separated.”

Lovett nods.

“He knows where the safe house is,” Jon says, fighting against the shaking in his voice, more for his own benefit for Lovett’s.

“Yeah,” Lovett agrees, and straightens his shoulders. “He’ll meet us there.”


	3. "Don't close your eyes"

The detention center is wide and grey, circled in clumps of dirt where cacti used to sit. Lovett’s not sure what it was, BT, but maybe a psychiatric asylum. He pulls his phone out of his pocket to build a joke out of that for Dark Twitter.

Jon’s phone buzzes in his hand and he rolls his eyes. “Really trying to make ‘Before Trump’ happen, huh?”

“I just think,” Lovett argues, as the guard shakes her bucket and he reluctantly puts his phone inside, “that if Trump is the second-coming, we should start measuring time in BT and AT.”

“Keep up the good fight.” Jon squeezes his shoulder. “I’m gonna have a chat with Representative Issa. Tell Tommy-” _that I love him_. Jon glances at the guard still taping her foot in front of them, and course corrects- “that I’ll get him next time.”

“Don’t let the evil wipe off on you,” Lovett says, in lieu of _break a leg_ , and doesn’t look back to catch Jon’s second eye roll of the last five minutes.

Lovett follows the guard to the visitors’ area. No matter how many times Lovett’s been here - every day he’s been able to take the time and scavenge the gas for the drive to the North Island detention center since Tommy was convicted of disorderly conduct and, if Jon can’t get it expunged, treason - this room still piques Lovett’s anxiety. He bounces his knee, drumming his fingers against the counter and counting the minutes since he last held his phone.

Eventually, though, the thick grey metal doors open and Tommy comes out, looking as washed out as always in prison orange. He falls into the chair across from Lovett, wincing, a little, and clutching at his ribs.

Lovett’s own ribs, just on their way to healing after the March for Democracy ended in riots a few weeks ago, twinge in sympathy. Lovett knows his own eyes are still bloodshot and rimmed in angry red blisters from the tear gas, but when Tommy looks up, he gasps.

“Do I look that bad?” Tommy chuckles.

Lovett’s pulse is thick in his eyes, and he slides them closed against the image of Tommy, his pale skin mottled blue and purple and red around his left eye and his high cheekbones.

“No, come on, Lovett. Don’t close your eyes.” Tommy starts to rise out of his seat, before he realizes that he can’t, and just puts his hand, palm-out, against the glass. “Please, don’t close your eyes. I want to see you.”

Lovett forces them open. “You look like shit,” he tries to joke, his voice croaking over the words. “I hope you at least got some peas in exchange for his fist. You could use them.”

“I inherited an empire, actually.” Tommy curls his fingers against the glass, but leaves them there. “Ten boxes of seafood ramen and ten men.”

“A gang,” Lovett translates. “You inherited a gang.”

Tommy shrugs. “Won, really.” He glances down at his fists, clenching them tightly even though the bruising looks like it hurts. 

Lovett swallows down all of the _violence isn’t the answer_ reprimands on the tip of his tongue. “Do what you have to.” He raises his hand, fitting his fingers along Tommy’s and wishing, more than anything - more, even, in this exact moment, than he wishes for the end of this terrible second civil war before it’s even, really, begun - that there wasn’t a layer of glass between them. “Do what you have to to survive,” Lovett repeats, “because if we get you out of here and there’s no _you_ left to rescue, heads will roll. Probably literally. Your head will roll, at least.”

“Picking up some dark humor, I see,” Tommy says, but he laughs, despite himself, his mottled face swirling into an impressionistic interpretation of his bruise.

Lovett shrugs. “Humor is a reflection of the times.”

The guard behind Tommy shifts. “Time’s up for today, traitor.”

Tommy flinches and the half of his face not bruised flushes red.

“Hey,” Lovett says, quietly. “Favs and I- we remember who you are. Just work on keeping your body in one piece, and we’ll do the rest.”

Tommy nods, pressing his fingers closer for a long minute, before the guard grabs his collar and pulls him away.

Lovett sits, his hand still pressed against the glass, for long minutes after the door swings shut.


	4. "Did you kill them?"

“Are they dead?” Lovett asks, reaching out to kick Jon’s thigh with his socked toes. “Did you kill them all with your witty tweets?”

Jon frowns over the top of his phone, but his fingers don’t slow.

“All kinds of bullets,” Tommy reminds Lovett, raising an eyebrow. His face is still mottled purple and it responds slowly to Tommy’s commands.

“Sure,” Lovett agrees, slowly, “but these bullets have the habit of catching friendly fire in the crosshairs. You even snapped at Dan - _Dan_ \- last week.”

“I think we’ve stretched this metaphor far enough,” Jon complains as he slides his fingers under Lovett’s joggers and runs his thumb over his pressure point. “And I apologized to Dan. On air.”

“This metaphor is getting more apt every day,” Tommy argues, before letting out a long, thick groan. Lovett - attuned, now, to every catch of breath and change of inflection in Tommy’s voice - snaps his eyes to Tommy to see him grimacing in his armchair. Lucca is sitting in his lap, her tail wagging, concerned, as Tommy shifts her to settle, gingerly, against his good side.

Lovett’s fist clenches, but he looks away before he can misplace any more annoyance onto Tommy’s dog. It’s not Lucca’s fault that Tommy has used that bruise as a ruse to exile himself to the guest room every night since he returned from the North Island detention center. It’s not Lucca’s fault that Tommy woke, halfway through that first night, with his hands around Lovett’s neck. It’s not Lucca’s fault that Tommy hadn’t believed any of Lovett’s platitudes, _it wasn’t you_ and _you wouldn’t hurt me_ and, quietly, barely a whisper in that dark, terrible stillness, _I trust you, I still trust you_. It’s not Lucca’s fault that, every time Lovett catches Tommy looking at him, his eyes are trained on the fingerprint-shaped bruises on Lovett’s eggshell skin.

Jon’s fingers tighten on Lovett’s ankle. “Can a bullet even catch friendly fire?”

“Hell if I know.” Lovett forces himself to shrug, but his shoulders feel tight. "A Tweet sure can, though.“

“Pretty sure,” Tommy says, slowly, his voice muffled by Lucca’s fur, “we’re going to have to decide what kinds of bullets we’re talking about, soon.”

Lovett sits up so quickly that he jerks Jon’s arm painfully as he pulls his leg out of Jon’s grasp. He slides his food under his body so he can sit up taller. Jon glares at him, but he does lock his phone and put it, face down, on the arm of the couch.

“We’ve-” Lovett shakes his head. Pundit looks up, concerned, from her place under the coffee table and jumps up to fill the new space between Lovett and Jon, the space where Tommy should be. “We have chosen.”

Tommy shrugs, half his face moving with his shoulder and the other half a step behind. “Have we?”

“Of course we fucking have.”

“The pen, right.” Tommy’s voice is dark and sullen, defeatist in the way it has been since he was released from detention. Since Jon had gotten him released - through the fancy-wordplay that Tommy so disparages, now, and a promise to Darrell fucking Issa that Jon refuses to expound upon - but not without the thick, dark, damaging _treason_ monicker next to his name.

Jon says, measured and careful, “the pen is the best tool we have. We’re running the Resistance with our pen and our voices and our message.”

Tommy scoffs. “Fuckload of good your speechwriting did. Really saved the country with your pen.”

Lovett’s stomach sinks. "Tommy, this isn’t you-”

"You were a fucking NSC spokesperson,” Jon interrupts, his voice as red as his cheeks. “Handle a lot of MK-16s from behind the press podium?”

“Fuck you.” Tommy pushes Lucca to the ground and stands. “I’ve seen things neither of you could ever understand.”

Lovett remembers late nights in the WH, he and Jon sharing a bottle of cheap Cabernet as they worked on speeches late into the night, waiting for Tommy to emerge, glassy-eyed and his forehead sweaty, from the situation room.

Lovett remembers the detention center, just a few weeks ago. Tommy saying, _I won a gang _. Tommy saying, _look at me_. Tommy saying, _I’m losing myself in here_ , with his eyes.__

__Lucca follows at Tommy’s heels and Lovett doesn’t breathe again until he hears the door to the guest room slam shut._ _

__“Well,” Lovett says, “that went well.”_ _

__Jon sighs, resting his head back against the cushions and closing his eyes. “What the fuck’s he thinking?”_ _

__“He’s not going to enlist,” Lovett promises, with more certainty than he really feels. “We just have to remind him that he has more to live for than to die for.”_ _

__Jon’s face contorts with self-recrimination. “There’s more than one way of dying.”_ _

__“By more than one kind of bullet,” Lovett agrees. “But our voices are still the best bullets we have.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Jon agrees, raising his head and reaching for his phone. “We should probably prepare for tomorrow’s pod-”_ _

___Without Tommy_ hangs, as good as spoken, between them._ _

__Lovett picks up his own phone and opens Dark Twitter._ _


	5. "It's okay to breakdown"

_“I bring this session of the House Un-American Committee to order.” Devin Nunes bangs his hand against his desk. “Please state your full name for the committee.”_

_“Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi.”_

_“Thank you.” Nunes shuffles the papers in front of him, letting the silence build, before, “this committee has reason to believe that you have committed treason against the United States of America. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Democratic Party?”_

_Leader Pelosi crosses her hands in front of her on the desk. She looks thinner than she did six months ago, her skin pale against the orange of her jumpsuit as she leans towards the mic. “I was the leader of the House of Representatives.”_

_“Please answer the question.” Nunes raises a slick eyebrow. “A simple yes or no will suffice.”_

_She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yes, I was, and still am, a member of the Democratic Party.”_

_“I see.” Nunes breathes in. “Six months ago, President Trump put forth a martial law bill in this very chamber. Did you cast a ‘nay’ vote on that bill?”_

_“Yes, and I’d do it again.”_

_“I see.” Nunes taps his finger against the wood so that it reverberates through his mic. “Ms. Pelosi, I will only ask this question once. Will you denounce the Democratic Party and declare fealty to President Trump?”_

_She lets the question echo through the House Chamber, until she has the attention of every person watching, the hundreds in the Chamber and the millions across nationalized Fox News. “No.”_

_“I have been very patient with you. Please, remember, that the death penalty is not off the table in cases of treason. I will only ask you one more time-”_

_“Sir,” she interrupts. “You already have my answer.”_

Elijah turns off the tape and Lovett turns back to the table, leaning towards his mic. “You heard it here first, pod people, Nancy Pelosi has made her stand.”

Jon swallows thickly. He doesn’t say anything.

Tommy frowns at him. All of his outward scars, at least, have healed, and the frown stretches from ear to ear, unhindered. “Are we in Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” He asks, stepping into Jon’s role, the question rusty and stiff.

The joke is so close to the Tommy he used to be, though, that Lovett asks, “so you were watching with us last week?” before he can stop himself. "I thought you were too busy sleeping in _the guest room_.“

Tommy’s eyes flick to Jon, expecting him to jump in as he has almost every time they’ve had this argument since Tommy got back from the North Island detention center almost six week ago, but Jon is still staring at the black TV screen. Tommy warns, “Lovett,” and, again, it sounds so close to exasperatedly fond that anyone who isn’t Lovett would be fooled.

Lovett waves towards Elijah. “Whatever. We’ll cut this.”

“We’re recording live.”

“Right. Fuck, I’d almost forgotten- we live in a totalitarian dictatorship now. None of the old rules apply.” Lovett kicks at Jon’s ankle under the table. “We record live to air. Jon doesn’t follow the outline. Tommy spends his evenings looking up gun manufacturers on Consumer Reports.”

“We only sleep on the best sheets. I only use the best toothbrush,” Tommy deadpans, calling Lovett’s bluff. “Gotta make sure we get the best security features.”

“He’s joking, listeners,” Lovett says, quickly relenting. “Are either of those even sponsoring this episode? Jon?”

Lovett kicks at Jon’s ankle again and Jon jerks his head up. His eyes are slitted and his voice trembles as he leans into his mic. “Parachute, yes. Quip- no, we’re free to use other toothbrushes now.”

“What a relief. Now I can stop using the best toothbrush I’ve ever owned.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. His skin is pale and pink where it’s grown in under his bruises, but his eyes are dark and edged in stark, purple rings. He drums his fingers against the table, and Lovett’s chest twists as he realizes he doesn’t know what Tommy’s new skin feels like, hasn’t asked Tommy to touch him since the bruises around his own neck have faded.

Instinctively, he reaches up, circling his neck gently. Tommy flinches.

“Anyway,” Lovett continues, when it’s clear that neither Jon nor Tommy will. “Today’s a good day for the Resistance. If any of you are called in front of the House Un-American Committee, Nancy Pelosi has set the blueprint for how to respond to an idiot of Devin Nunes’ stature-”

Jon’s chair squeaks as he pushes it back, rising from the table and leaving before anyone can stop him.

“Just one more note, for everyone out there,” Lovett continues, his voice softening. “It’s been a hard day. It’s okay to hurt and break down. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

Beside him, Tommy’s shoulders shake.

“Cry. Hold your loved ones. Eat your weight in McDonald’s, I don’t care. But, whatever it is, make it good. Because when you’re done, you have to get up and fight again tomorrow.”

Lovett slides his headphones to rest around his neck, turning with _what the hell?_ sliding off his tongue, but Tommy’s already gone.


	6. "For how long?"

Tommy lets the door slam shut behind him. "What the fuck is wrong with you?“

Jon shrugs, his shoulders tight and rolled inwards. He clenches his fists in his pockets and his eyes are dark and haunted. He’s been holding himself together since Trump declared martial law almost six months ago. He’s been the one reminding Tommy to eat and niggling Lovett into physical therapy for his ribs. He’s the one who got Tommy released from the detention center and he’s been, quietly and without complaint and with a little help from Dan, picking up Tommy’s part of the pod research since he got back.

Looking at Jon now, though, Tommy has to wonder how long he’s been hiding this dark, fragile, ghost of himself.

“We were in the middle of a podcast,” Tommy continues, slowly, not sure if he should go for anger or concern and falling somewhere in-between. “We were _live_.”

“Oh,” Jon scoffs. His cheeks are flushed red and his mouth is tight around the words. “So you care about the pod now?”

Jon chooses blinding rage. 

Tommy can meet him there. Tommy’s got enough blinding rage of his own, now, to last through a baker’s dozen of these fights. Tommy has enough blinding rage that he has his enlistment paperwork signed and notarized, hidden on the top shelf in his office, between a book on Syria that he knows Lovett will never touch and a Reagan biography that makes Jon shiver every time he sees it. “Of course I fucking care. Don’t put your crises of faith on me, just because doing this-” Tommy spreads his arms to encompass their abandoned-warehouse-turned Crooked Media HQ- “is the best answer you have for the hellhole we’re in and it’s not enough.”

“Here we go again.” Jon pulls his left hand out of his pocket so he can gesticulate his points. “Violence isn’t the answer, Tommy. Bullets aren’t the answer. War is not the answer.”

“What do you think secession is?” Tommy asks, exasperated. “What do you think is going to happen? The west coast is going to secede and President Harris will convince Trump to let us go peacefully? And then- what? We’ll conduct a propaganda war out of this damn warehouse that will convince the rest of the country to follow suit.”

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I think.”

“That’s even more naive than usual,” Tommy scoffs, reaching for Jon’s loosest threads and pulling on them. “Hope and change can’t win a war.”

“No shit.” Jon turns his head, his jaw clenched and angular. “Hope and change have been in short supply around here, anyway.”

Tommy’s mind splits and shatters. Half of him is back in Iowa, what feels like four lifetimes ago, when he was the naive one, young enough to think that words and ideas could change the world. The other half is in that Navy detention center, feeling his cheekbone crack under the weight of just how much power words and ideas can have.

He swallows. “Hope’s a little hard to come by in prison.”

Jon flinches. “Hope was a little hard to come by outside of prison, too.”

“What-?” Tommy starts in frustration, then pushes forward. “What did you do, Jon? What did you trade for my release?”

Jon shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It-” He sighs, his shoulders sloping inwards as he loses his handle on his anger. “It was worth it, to get you back.” He takes a deep breath and corrects, “it will be worth it, when you come back to us.”

Tommy’s eyes slide closed.

“I miss you.” Jon pushes. “Lovett- he hasn’t let me touch him since we lost you at that damn protest.”

“I’m trying,” Tommy whispers. “I’m really trying. It’s just- I need some time.”

“Time is the one thing I can’t give you.”

Tommy frowns at the way Jon’s face shifts in anguish. “Jon?”

Jon takes a deep, shuddering breath and finally pulls his right hand out of his pocket. He holds it out and Tommy takes the worn, crumpled piece of paper. It’s so creased that the edges tare a little as he unfolds it, and Jon winces, even though he’s clearly read it hundreds of times already.

_Hollywood Blacklist_

Tommy scans down the list, his heart sinking as he sees it, smudged and barely legible from Jon’s thumb. _Jonathan Ira Lovett - producer, screenwriter, comedian_.

“I got it from Ira,” Jon says, his voice low and uneven. “It’s credible.”

Tommy doesn’t look up as he asks - “For how long? How long have you been bottling this up? How long have you been hiding this?” - accusatory and just as uneven.

Jon shrugs. “A few weeks. I wanted to- I didn’t know if I should, with-” He motions towards Tommy, meaning Tommy’s temper, meaning the way Lovett shrinks in self-flagellation every time Tommy walks into a room. “Anyway, the House Un-American Committee doesn’t have this list, but- I thought you should know the very real danger Lovett may be in. Before you do something unbelievably stupid.”

Tommy thinks about the enlistment papers on his shelf, about how selfishly he’s been handling his pain, and vows to himself to burn them before Jon or Lovett have any chance of finding them. Tommy folds the list and hands it back to Jon. He lets their fingers brush for a long moment. “We should tell Lovett.”

Jon lets out a breath he’s been holding, Tommy figures, for weeks now, and nods. “We should take him to lunch. Sushi, maybe? Seems like a good end-of-the-world meal.”

“Mexican,” Tommy suggests.

“Yeah, he’ll like that.” Jon chuckles. “Del Taco it is.”


	7. The NP

Lovett doesn’t see them until it’s too late.

“Good morning, sir,” the officer says, a vacant, placating smile on his face as he holds up his palm so Lovett can’t pass. “Can I please see your ID?”

Lovett’s heart beats wildly, pounding against his mostly-healed ribs. He pictures his wallet, just a couple hundred feet away, sitting on the edge of the dresser in their bedroom. He pictures Jon and Tommy, tangled together where he left them after they rolled into the warm space he deserted between them. He pictures their faces, when they wake up hours from now and Lovett isn’t there.

As he pats his pockets performatively, he regrets leaving them. The momentary flash of panic - the way he woke in a cold sweat when Tommy curled his fingers against Lovett’s shoulder in sleep, the way Lovett’s mind flashed back to that night a couple months ago now when he woke with Tommy’s hands around his neck, the way Lovett’s body is still betraying both of them, all of them - feels petty and stupid now, in the face of the Nationalized Police Officer tapping his foot and growing increasingly impatient.

Lovett twists his face and tugs at Pundit’s leash, pulling her closer to his side. “I’m sorry, officer. I think I left my ID at home.”

He hums, pulling out his tablet. “What’s your name?”

“Peter Parker,” he says, wishing that he hadn’t been so blazenly defiant when he’d built his fake identity.

The officer’s partner hums again, and Lovett has never been good at reading people, but even he can translate the disbelief in the officer’s shoulders. “Peter Parker,” he says, his mouth rolling around the ‘p’s.

“Yep.” Lovett shrugs. “My parents were comic collectors.”

Internally, he crosses his fingers that that doesn’t contradict anything in his fake profile. He doesn’t remember much about the morning Jon dragged him all the way out to the San Gabriel Valley to sit in the kitchen of some genius computer-programming whiz kid and build a new life for himself. He remembers answering an endless series of questions that started with name, age, and social security number and devolved into favorite color, countries visited, and great-grandparents’ maiden names.

_Choose an identity you’ll remember_ , the kid had urged.

Jon had kicked him under the table when Lovett had responded, deadpan and recalcitrant, _Jon Lovett _, so he had gone with the next best thing.__

__At the time, it had felt like a betrayal of the man he’s worked so hard to become over the past thirty-eight years. The man who was, finally, channeling decades of rage into something good and useful. The man who was, after years of self-sabotage, able to love Jon and Tommy the way they deserve to be loved. The man who, most of the time now, believed he was worthy of the love they gave him in return._ _

__That feels so stupid, now. Against all odds, Jon and Tommy love him in totality, even the worst parts. Even the parts that leave open Captain Crunch boxes on the kitchen island and the parts that forget to put the top on the toothpaste and the embarrassingly desperate parts that take up most of the air on whatever stage he’s on. Lovett is still that man, whether his ID says _Jon Lovett_ or _Peter Parker_ or whatever dumber name he’ll have to adopt if he gets through this incident._ _

__Lovett’s anger and fear pale in comparison to what he’s about to put them through._ _

__The first officer taps at his tablet, frowning._ _

__The second officer reaches into his back pocket, pulling out a pair of handcuffs._ _

__“Are those really necessary?” Lovett asks. Pundit sits on his toes and whines. Her curls are warm and comforting against his shin._ _

__“By regulation 784 subsection b, every citizen must present ID upon request. Until you can present your ID, you are under criminal protection.”_ _

__Lovett bites his tongue against the hypocrisy of that statement, in favor of the more pressing question. “What will happen to my dog?”_ _

__The first officer frowns over his tablet at Pundit._ _

__She barks, her tail beating frantically against Lovett’s ankles. "Her bark is worse than her bite,“ he promises, before adding, quickly, "in fact, she doesn’t bite at all,” feeling more hopeless than he has in any of the terrible, devastating, worthless moments he’s found himself in over the past eight months._ _

__“We’ll take her to the pound,” the second officer says, rolling his eyes and adding something that sounds quite a bit like _fucking queers_ under his breath. “If you’re cleared, you can pick her up there.”_ _

__Lovett can’t think around the rushing in his ears. “And if I’m not?”_ _

__The second officer motions for him to turn around, and Lovett tamps down every instinct in him to run. He turns, wincing as he feels the officer pull Pundit’s leash from his wrist and replace it with the sickening click of the handcuffs._ _

__The first office closes his tablet, sliding it under his arm and pushing his sunglasses up his nose. “If you’re not,” he says, casually, “then your dog will be the least of your problems.”_ _

__The second officer holds Lovett’s head down as he pushes him into the backseat of their patrol car. Pundit jumps in after him, raising her head so she can rest her nose in his shoulder. She whimpers into his ear and he presses a kiss behind hers._ _

__“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into her fur, hoping against hope that she believes it more than he does._ _


	8. LOLI

“Los Angeles,” Lovett says, his voice ringing out over the abandoned warehouse. “Very excited to be here. Look at all you beautiful members of the Resistance.”

On stage, Lovett takes a long sip of his gin and tonic. He looks pale under the artificial lights of their makeshift stage. Jon had wanted him to cancel it - three days out from three days in detention wasn’t enough time to catch up on the news, nonetheless rebuild his psyche, but Tommy had understood the need to keep busy, the need to _do something_. If Tommy’s something had leaned a little more vigilante and Lovett’s leans a little more Thomas Paine- well, Tommy’s never been unclear about the role each of the play in this relationship and in this company.

“You look a little too joyful, considering the week we’ve had. Either you’ve been watching the,” he slides his cards under his elbow, squeezing them against his much-too thin ribs so he can make air quotes, “‘news’ according to our new, nationalized news provider, or you’ve all been hitting the bar pretty hard.”

The crowd erupts in cheers and a couple dozen beer bottles raise into the air.

Tommy takes a sip from his own drink, holding it away from Pundit’s thoughtful nose. She whines, sitting under his knees and widening her big brown eyes at Lovett onstage. He ruffles her ears, grateful he didn’t leave her home with Jon to record a better-late-than-never Pod Save America episode with Dan.

“Yeah, I thought as much.” Lovett chuckles, turning to look at the physical, wooden version of the rant wheel Elijah had whipped up once bandwidth and electricity had become scarce commodities. “Well, unlike you neanderthals, I’ve been watching the news. And what a week, for our country, for the Resistance, and for me, personally.”

Tommy’s stomach twists. He can still remember what it was like to wake up, his legs tangled with Jon’s in a strip of mid-morning sun, Lucca licking happily at his ear and Leo lying, concerned, by the bedroom door. He can still remember pressing a kiss to Jon’s wrist before sliding away, shoving both dogs in front of him and out into the living room. He can still remember the sharp, twist of - he told himself - unfounded fear when he saw the coffeemaker untouched and Pundit’s leash still missing from its hook.

On stage, though, Lovett smiles. When he reaches for his notecards, though, Tommy can see the dark, angry rings of bruises that haven’t started to fade from his wrists. 

“So,” Lovett continues, “I thought I’d start the show with a spin of the rant wheel. A pre-show spin, if you will. I’m not sure where it’ll land, so, this week we have The NP, The NP, The NP, etc.” He reaches out, hooking his index finger around a dowel, and spins. “Well, look at that, it’s landed on The NP.”

The crowd laughs.

“It has landed on The NP,” Lovett says, thoughtfully, when the wheel rolls to a stop. “Okay, look, we all know the Nationalized Police is bad. It has unprecedented power to search and detain. It doesn’t need warrants, except in very specific circumstances. Breaking and entering is in the NP mission statement.”

The crowd boos.

“But you know what’s worst? The way they treat our pets.” Lovett blinks rapidly. His eyes sweep towards Tommy and Pundit, then away again. “Do know what happens to your pet if you’re taken by The NP?”

The crowd hisses.

“They take her - them - to _the Pound_.” Lovett nods, his neck flushed with all the anger he’s been trying to resolve, over the past few days, by exhausting his body in Jon and Tommy, in marathon video games, in exercise. None of them have worked quite as well as the hive mind of a crowd does, though. “Where they keep pets in rows and rows of cages, with just enough water to survive.

“Anyway, it’s cruel and unusual punishment and we need to do something about it. Please check out the Humane Society’s Dark Twitter feed and, if you have a few dollars to spare, please, spare it for them.

“End of rant. Now, for the news, let me bring out our esteemed panel-”

Tommy pulls Pundit into his lap, burying his face in her neck and watching the rest of the show through her fur. When it’s over, he stays in his seat, adjusting her in his arms so he can pull out his phone and scroll through Dark Twitter as he waits.

He freezes when he sees an alert on his lockscreen - the crawler he’s employed to scroll through the Internet, both legal and dark, for mentions of any of their names, his, Lovett’s, Jon’s, Dan’s - a bright, red triangle next to Lovett’s name.

He opens his phone to read the Tweet. The blue bird stares back at him, over a picture of Lovett with the rant wheel behind him.

Twitter. Not Dark Twitter.

Tommy swears.

His phone rings and he thinks about not answering for just a moment, before he holds it to his ear.

“Fuck,” is all Jon says.

Tommy breathes. “LA isn’t safe anymore.”

“No,” Jon sighs. They’ve had this argument before. First, when they first saw Lovett’s name on the Blacklist. Second, that awful morning when they finally ascertained, through the Resistance grapevine, that Lovett was in NP police holding. Both times, Jon had argued that having Lovett with him was worth the risk. Now, though, Jon’s voice shakes as he says, “Lovett can’t stay here.”


	9. "Please, don't act like you care"

Lovett leaves LA on a sunny, incongruous day in mid-July.

The NY Times headline reads “HUAC Expected to Hand Down Decision on Pelosi by Mid-Week.”

The Fox & Friends chyron reads “has George Clooney and wife Amal been running an underground prostitution ring in Ecuador?”

The trending hashtags on Twitter read #Nobel Prize and #Ecuador. The trending hashtags on Dark Twitter read #HUAC and #Justice for Pelosi.

Lovett twists his feet against the crumbling concrete of the LA bus terminal as he dumps his duffle bag onto the plastic chair next to him. It smells like urine and desperation. There’s a family with three young children sleeping against the wall and another hugging and crying close enough for him to hear the low, murmured, painful Spanish. Behind him, a woman nurses her child, while a second screams at her side. At his feet, Pundit tracks a cockroach down a crack in the floor.

She’s been quiet since Jon rescued her from the pound three weeks ago, only a few hours but he’ll never know how many traumas after they were picked up by the Nationalized Police Force. Lovett, himself, spent two more days in a holding cell, while they confirmed his fake identity. Lovett had spent the entire forty-eight hours holding his breath, but the eighteen-year-old genius computer programmer who Jon found on the Dark Web message boards proved his worth. When Lovett got out, Pundit met him with her paws on his thighs, and she hasn’t left his side since.

He doesn’t see Jon until his duffle bag thumps to the floor in a cloud of dirt and Jon falls into the chair next to him, Lovett’s bus ticket clenched in his hand. He’s careful to keep an inch of space between their knees as he pulls his sunglasses down his nose and looks around. “Two at your six.”

“Roger,” Lovett rolls his eyes, “Generic Bond Sexual Contest #7.”

“Give me some credit, I’d at least be top three,” Jon argues, without looking away from the Nationalized Police Officers patrolling the station.

Lovett scoffs and says, “you’ve gotta add a few because of the gay thing,” before realizing that it’s a statement that belongs BT, when it felt commonplace instead of trivial to complain about the lack of a gay superhero. Now, the entire slate of gay rights is on the ceremonial ballot-cum-chopping block and, while a gay superhero still might be the lynchpin to changing the minds of Americans, it’s not Americans who write the laws - cultural or legal - anymore.

“Might need to add a few more than seven,” Jon deadpans, following Lovett’s train of thought. He sinks down in his chair a little, making himself seem smaller, and still does not look away from the officers. “Good thing Tommy didn’t come.”

“Yeah,” Lovett agrees, sullenly. Tommy had said goodbye at the house - his body spread over Lovett’s on their mattress, comforting and strong and familiar in waking the way it still isn’t in sleeping. Tommy had kissed him and whispered platitudes. _I wish I could come with you_ and _I want things to be different_ and _I’ve loved you, I’ve loved your body, I’ve loved your mind, for longer than you’ll ever believe me_.

Lovett doesn’t wish that Tommy was here, not with the treasonous black mark on his record that makes him vulnerable to even the simplest police search.

Knowing that doesn’t make Lovett hate it any less.

The loudspeaker crackles. “The 12:45 bus to San Francisco leaves from Platform 2. Please line up against the right side and have your passports and travel papers ready for inspection.”

“That’s you,” Jon says, standing and handing over Lovett’s bus ticket in one motion.

Lovett takes it in the same hand as Pundit’s leash, and shoulders his duffle with the other. “Thanks.”

Jon walks with him towards Platform 2, slowing his steps to perfectly mirror Lovett’s.

“Well,” Lovett says, quietly, looking at the line of lonely, desperate people, paperwork clenched in their shaking fists. “This is me. I guess I’ll see you-”

Jon’s face twists and he reaches over, pulling the earplug out of Lovett’s right ear so he can’t possibly pretend not to here. “What if I asked you to stay?”

Lovett opens his mouth, but they’ve argued about this over and over again in the weeks since Jon rescued him from prison. Lovett knows devastatingly well where Jon stands on this issue - Jon had wanted Mexico; Lovett had wanted LA; Dan had offered up San Francisco, so they had compromised - and he might be asking Lovett to stay now, but he doesn’t mean it. “Then I would know you’re lying.”

Over the past three weeks, Jon has thrown every argument in the book at him.

The somewhat logical _LA is the worst possible place to be while you’re on the Hollywood Blacklist. What are chances someone will recognize you and know you’re not Peter fucking Parker?_

The ominous _I can’t rescue you the way I rescued Tommy. I don’t have a second trump card_.

And the devastating, final, _I don’t know what Tommy would do if we lost you_. Lovett had thought about the enlistment papers that Tommy doesn’t know that Lovett knows he burned. Lovett had thought about the search history on Tommy’s laptop, the number of handgun permit searches he’d made in the weeks following his time in detention. Lovett had thought about the haunted look Tommy had worn for months and is just getting over, every time he caught sight of Lovett’s bare neck.

Jon’s face twists. “It’s not that I don’t want you to stay-”

The loudspeaker crackles again, drowning Jon out. “This is the second call for the 12:45 to San Francisco. Line up on Platform 2 with your ticket and your papers ready to show the officers.”

Lovett looks at Jon, really looks at him, at the deep trenches wrinkling across his forehead and the pale rings around his eyes. Lovett’s been in love with Jon’s face for over a decade, and he’s been in love with Jon for even longer. He fell in love with Jon on paper, through his writing and Barack Obama’s voice, long before he knew what Jon’s face looks like, flushed in anger or wide with fear or sweaty with pleasure.

Lovett looks at Jon, standing in the middle of the LA central bus station - the epicenter of the second civil war they’ve been wittingly thrown into - and he knows that he’s the one who has to make the final decision to save all three of them. And Lovett- Lovett’s been shattering for months, already. The pieces that started to crack when he first saw his name on the blacklist and splintered during his three days in prison shatter, now, against this cracked and dirty cement floor. He cuts and bleeds when he reaches for the pieces of himself that are left. He can’t let Jon bleed, too.

“Please don’t do this,” Lovett whispers, snatching his earplug out of Jon’s palm and reaching for the rage he’s kept locked away since he was fifteen years old on a playground on Long Island. “Don’t act like you care, it just makes this harder.”

Jon flinches, reeling back like Lovett struck him. And, in a way, Lovett figures, he did. But whatever hurt Jon feels now, it’s nothing compared to how he’ll hurt if Lovett stays.

Lovett shoves the earplug into his ear, clutches Pundit’s leash in his hand, and walks away without turning back.

It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.


	10. "You are not fine"

Dan wakes with the sun and a cold nose at his wrist. He blinks his eyes open and his vision is filled with Pundit’s golden curls and sullen, hopeful eyes. Just as it has been each of the past ten mornings since she realized what a sucker he is.

Since she realized her dad was no longer up to getting out of bed for early morning walks. Since she realized her dad was no longer getting out of bed for much of anything.

He can’t be mad, though, when her tail thumps the moment he jumpstarts their routine. Slip-on Vans. Georgetown hoodie. A half-step towards Lovett’s closed door and then a half-step back. Her leash clipped to her collar and looped around his wrist.

She sets a leisurely pace and the direction as he buries his nose in Dark Twitter until his phone rings, like clockwork. “Morning,” he answers.

“Morning,” Tommy murmurs. He sounds tired and he cuts off a yawn. Dan can hear the glass door to the back porch click shut as he sneaks out to the back porch. As if he needs to. As if Jon is getting up any earlier than Lovett is, these days. “Sorry, fuck, I’m tired. How are you?”

“You could have called later,” Dan chastises him, gently.

Tommy groans, and Dan can hear the jingle of collars as Tommy throws the ball for Leo and Lucca. “The dogs woke me up,” he says, before dropping his voice, “they miss her. Leo wakes up looking for her and- they don’t understand,” meaning _I miss her_ , meaning _I miss Lovett_ , meaning _I miss Jon_ , meaning _no one is whole when a third of their heart is missing_.

Dan’s own heart aches. He could have been- If he had been ready- If he hadn’t been so scared, all those years ago and then, again, in 2016- If he hadn’t said no, over and over again, that third could have been a quarter. Now, Dan’s heart beats in fourths, alone.

He forces himself to chuckles. “Pundit’s mad at me because I won’t let her drink the remnants of last night’s beer off the sidewalk.” Pundit’s ears perk up at her name, and Dan takes the opportunity to tug her away from yet another garbage can.

“Sounds like her.” Tommy laughs, but it’s a little wobbly. When he continues, his voice shakes with shards of glass. “How is he?”

Dan takes a deep, shaky breath, and thinks about the ghost of Lovett who he picked up at Fisherman’s Wharf almost two full weeks ago. The ghost of Lovett who’s been eating his food and sleeping in his guest room and playing his video games, letting himself be killed by pixelated zombies over and over and over again, as if he’s trying to somehow wrap his head around real world death through the electronic apocalypse. “He sleeps all day. He hasn’t strung together more than three words in days. He only eats the Cocoa Puffs I smuggled in on the black market.”

Tommy audibly winces. “I’ll pay you back for those, next time I see you.” _If I ever see you again_.

“Cash app me,” Dan tries to joke, but it comes out flat and strained. He tries again. “Don’t pay me back at all. If it gets him to eat, it’s worth every penny.”

“Yeah.” Tommy swallows. “Yeah, just- I don’t want- I know the burden-” 

Dan thinks about Jon, lying under the quilts in LA.

“I knew what I was getting into,” Dan interrupts, the words rising like bile in his throat, meaning the cocoa puffs, but also meaning having to face the thin, nebulous feelings that coalesced, a decade and three years too late, in the moment Jon called and said _I don’t know where else he can go_. And it’s been years since he’s lain awake wondering what might have been if he’d taken Lovett up on what he was offering, that dark, snowy day in DC, but he hasn’t been able to sleep since Lovett moved into his guest room. In for a penny, in for a pound at the end of the world. Dan takes a deep breath. “I love him, too.”

“I know,” Tommy’s quiet, desperate, definitive voice doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m glad he’s with you.”

Dan’s chest twists and aches as he rounds the corner. Recognizing his street, Pundit tugs at her leash, pulling him closer and faster towards Lovett.

Dan swallows. “Hey, I’ve gotta-”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, quickly, resigned. “I should go try and wake Jon.”

“If you- If he- give him my love.”

“Yeah, course. You, too. Same time tomorrow?”

Pundit gives a final tug that nearly pulls Dan’s elbow out of its socket and he jogs the rest of the way, already pulling his keys out of his pocket. “Tomorrow,” he promises.

He pockets his phone and, with a long, shaky breath, enters his townhouse.

Lovett’s sitting on the floor in Dan’s living room, his back against the couch and his ankles crossed in front of him. His curls are unwashed and sweaty where they stick against his forehead and he’s wearing the same rank Holy Cross sweatshirt and Kenyon sweatpants that ceased smelling like Jon and Tommy over a week ago. There’s an open box of black market Cocoa Puffs between his knees and a zombie game turned up to ear-splitting-levels on Dan’s 52".

He doesn’t pause the game as he lifts his elbow for Pundit to crawl under. She rests her nose in his crotch and steals a Cocoa Puff from a crease in his sweatpants.

“Hey,” Dan greats him, as he kicks his Vans into the mud closet. “You’re up.”

Lovett grunts, but doesn’t look up. On the screen, he kills two zombies, then stands still so he can be bitten. A bright green _you have been infected, game over_ warning flashes on the screen as the music drops into an ominous minor key. Lovett presses restart and Dan watches as Lovett’s avatar makes it through a deserted house in the woods before running, headlong and forewarned, into a zombie nest.

Dan’s ears ring with the sounds of the game and Tommy’s voice, small and grateful and worried, saying _I’m glad he’s with you_.

Tommy and Jon are entrusting Dan with Lovett’s health and heart.

Dan pushes away the memories - Lovett leaning towards him, snowflakes on the ends of his eyelashes, his smile shy and hopeful - that have made him shy away from pulling at the loose threads that are barely holding Lovett together.

He reaches down, pulling the TV plug from the wall, listening as the screen crackles and pops, flickering momentarily before going black.

“Hey,” Dan greets, again. “We need to talk.”

Lovett pulls his knees into his chest, dislodging Pundit. His face twists, dark and etched in the pain he thinks no one else can see. “We really don’t. I told you, I’m fine.”

“What do you mean you’re fine?” Dan motions towards Lovett’s hair and his clothes and the Cocoa Puff crumbs in a neat circle around him. “You are not fine.”

Lovett glares.

Dan meets Lovett, glare for glare. For better or worse, Dan’s always been the one who’s been able to meet Lovett, punch for punch or laugh for laugh.

He squares his feet and prepares to catch Lovett when he falls.


	11. "It came from one of us"

Lovett takes his time choosing between the Keebler chocolate chip cookies and the Hostess cakes with marshmallow in the middle, before taking one of each and heading to the front of the community center meeting room, placing the paper plate on the edge of the podium with a flourish.

“I’m good,” Dan says, absently, without looking up from his notecards.

Lovett shakes the plate. “You have to eat one, or I’ll look like an asshole.”

“And that’s my problem, how?” Dan asks, but he does look up just long enough to take the cookie. It crunches as he takes a bite and Lovett knows from experience that it tastes like sawdust, regardless of the nerves Dan’s always gotten before public speaking. A crumb clings obstinately to Dan’s lower lip, and Lovett reaches out to wipe it off, before stopping.

The last few weeks have been strange. In some ways, it’s felt like the earliest days in the White House. When Dan’s hair wasn’t flecked through with grey and the skin around his eyes was smooth, when the worst thing either of them could imagine was an unfavorable NY Times Op Ed or a no vote from a Democratic Senator, when Lovett had thought maybe- possibly- improbably-

But Trump is President-turned-despot and Lovett’s worst thing has deepened and expanded to include three days in a state-run holding cell with no cameras and no guards and no lights at the ends of any tunnels. When he sleeps, he dreams of a clammy hand on his shoulder and a fist against his eye socket. When he wakes, he remembers Jon standing in their living room urging him to leave, to leave him, to leave Tommy, to leave the life they’ve built together. To leave behind the certainty he’d so painstakingly earned, brick by wobbly brick; a certainty that they want him, that they need him, that they chose him.

That wall crumbled a hell of a lot faster than it took to build it.

Dan tilts his head, eyes narrowing at Lovett’s frozen hand, and Lovett shakes himself out of it. He brushes the crumb from Dan’s lip and reaches for the Hostess Cake, shoving it into his mouth in one bite.

“Hostess is the cockroach of processed sugar,” Lovett jokes then, when Dan doesn’t look up from his notecards, explains, “marshmallow cakes will be the only thing left at the end of the world.”

“I understood the joke,” Dan rolls his eyes, because of course he did. Dan’s always been able to keep up with him. That’s never been their problem.

Lovett scoffs. “Did the end of the world eat your sense of humor?”

Dan reaches the end of his notes and finally looks up. His eyes are blue in the dim afternoon light. “Don’t accept the premise of the question.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lovett sighs, but he feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It feels foreign against his cheeks, unused muscles creaking and rusty after weeks of disuse. He’s been oiling them, slowly, over the past few weeks since Dan unplugged the television set and unplugged Lovett’s brain, knocking him, forcibly, out of the self-destructive loop he’d been stuck in.

Dan nervously taps his notecards against the edge of the podium. “Should we start without him?”

Lovett glances at the thin glass doors. The room is full to bursting, members of Dan’s SF chapter of the resistance filling every chipped plastic seat and lining every wall, but the doors stopped swinging at least ten minutes ago and over twenty minutes after the meeting was supposed to start.

Lovett shrugs, offers, “BART is unreliable these days,” as he tries not to let his heart sink. He thinks about Tommy, lost in the middle of the last legal protest they may ever organize. He thinks about the stories he’s heard out of Chicago, about the raid on Axe’s University of Chicago office and the way Cody’s wife had cried as the Nationalized Police Force tore apart their apartment. He thinks about the pictures Alyssa’s been posting on Dark Twitter, of the New York library burning and the subway trains stuttering through the black smoke.

Dan nods, tapping his fingers against the podium and twisting his feet behind it. Lovett ignores the nervous energy he’s always exuded before a live performance and pulls his phone out of his pocket, playing their theme music loud enough to get the attention of the crowd.

“Thanks,” Dan deadpans, before turning to the crowd. Lovett shrugs and heads to his seat in the front row. “Thank you all for coming on this foggy July morning. I can see we have more than enough for a quorum, so I’m calling this meeting of the resistance to session. On the docket today, we have Jon Lovett in from the LA chapter and -”

The glass doors bang open, slamming against the wall and shivering on their hinges. Lovett looks up from his seat to see Plouffe strolling purposefully through the crowd. He looks uncharacteristically disheveled, the sleeves of his grey zip-up hanging over his fingers and his glasses bent around his nose. There’s an unattended cut in his hairline.

The room sucks in a collective breath, and Dan reaches out to steady Plouffe’s elbow as he gets close enough. Instinctively, Lovett rises out of his chair, overcoming months of wallowing on the sidelines in favor of supporting Plouffe’s other elbow as he catches his breath.

“The blacklist,” Plouffe says, pulling out of their hands and leaning against the podium. “Assange leaked the blacklist.”

The room lets out its breath. The community center fills with chatter and exclamations.

Plouffe drops his voice, just loud enough for Dan and Lovett to hear. There’s blood dripping down his forehead. “It’s on resistance stationary. It came from one of us.”

Lovett’s stomach drops. He holds out a napkin with shaking fingers.

Plouffe holds the napkin to his cut. “We have a mole.”


	12. "I just want to be numb"

August slips into September on the back of a sweltering heat wave.

Under the new Trump Administration regulations, monopolies are rewarded rather than punished for anti-trust policies, and the LA Department of Water and Power is no exception. Restaurants turned off their air conditioning in mid-July and never turned it back on. Movie theaters have become unbearable. Even The Grove has become a cesspool of body heat and friction from its ongoing and never ending construction project.

Tommy unclips the dogs from their leashes and dabs at his forehead as he waits for the water to cool down before stepping into the shower.

The water is blissfully cool on his back and he closes his eyes as he wraps his hand around himself. It's been so long. Sixty-three days and counting since Jon chased Lovett to San Francisco. Sixty-three days and counting since Tommy pressed Lovett into their mattress, registering his protest through kisses and last, purposeful touches, but not saying anything out loud. Sixty-three days since Tommy's felt anything but the soft, steady caress of Dan's voice in his ear from 380 miles away and the brush of Lucca's fur at his hip every night.

Sixty-three days, and Lovett's face is beginning to fade. Sixty-three days, and Tommy's seen Jon for every single one of them, but he's starting to forget what Jon's face looks like, too, the Jon he loves, the Jon who loves and smiles and cries. Tommy closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the cool tile and finishes across his chest, rote and dispassionately routine.

His skin prickles, steaming in the heated LA air, as he steps out and dries himself off.

Lucca and Leo are sitting outside the bathroom door, their ears perking up as he steps out, the towel twisted precariously at his hip. Jon, though, only slits his eyes open, dark and red, shooting accusatory daggers towards the flush on Tommy's stomach, like he knows exactly what Tommy's been doing.

Tommy sighs deeply, saying, "anytime you want to join me-" before he can think better of it.

Jon grunts, pulling his knees closer to his stomach under the quilt. He closes his eyes.

Tommy drops the towel and reaches into the dresser for a pair of briefs and the thinnest khaki shorts he owns. He pauses only briefly at the row of Lovett's striped briefs, still snuggled between Jon and Tommy's, starting to gather dust. Tommy should throw them in the laundry. Just in case- Just in case.

"Are you-?" Tommy starts, then stops. He sits on the edge of the mattress, by Jon's bent knees, and switches tactics. "I'd really like it if you came to the office today. We're finalizing plans for the newspaper and Tanya has a few questions on layout."

Jon makes a short, wounded noise, but he doesn't move. His voice is muffled against his pillow. "The layout's fine."

Tommy rolls his eyes. "We're building the underground newspaper for the resistance. ‘Fine’ isn't really what we're going for."

Jon shrugs his shoulders in the tight space between the mattress and the quilt.

"Pri said you promised her a story on California's minimum wage fight," Tommy pushes. "A couple of weeks ago, remember?" _The last time you were in the office_.

Jon sighs, rolling onto his back and letting his knees fall open. "I don't have anything to say about the minimum wage."

"You don't have anything to say about anything," Tommy mutters. "God forbid you _care_ about something enough to write 500 words on it. For the newspaper you fucking founded."

Jon's face screws into thick wrinkles of white and red and tan, even after weeks inside their dark bedroom. "Lovett founded," he corrects, softly.

Tommy swallows. His chest twists and he bunches his fist in the edge of the quilt to keep from knocking the self-loathing out of Jon by physical force, since force of will hasn't been working for weeks. "Don't you think I want to be numb? Don't you think it hurts for me, too? I don't want to feel anything, either, but you haven't given me that option, you selfish prick."

Tommy stands, pulling the edge of the quilt with him and dumping it on the ground. It's laundry day, anyway.

"Get up. Shower. We're going to the office today."

Jon sits up against the headboard. His bare chest is thin and loose and he hugs his long legs to cover it. He glares at Tommy over his knees.

Tommy glares back, pulls a shirt over his head, and goes back to glaring.

He's not sure how much longer they can stand there, locked in a battle of wills that Tommy's not prepared to but is pretty sure he'll lose, when both their phones buzz.

Jon reaches to grab his from his bedside table as Tommy pulls his out of his front pocket. It's a WhatsApp from Dan. Tommy’s chest aches as scrolls up through their group chat and sees that the last message sent to the group was sixty-three days ago, when Jon sent Lovett's bus information.

It's a link, not to Dark Twitter, but to the Fox News homepage.

**Last of the Hollywood Blacklist Leaked. Nunes Hands Out 5th Day of Subpoenas.**

Tommy scrolls down to the end of the article. Lovett's name is thirteenth on the list. 

Tommy's still reading when Jon's phone thumps to the mattress. He glances up in time to see Jon drop his briefs to the floor of the bathroom as he steps into the shower. 

"Start the car," Jon orders, his voice rough with disuse. "I'll be there in five." 

Tommy reaches for the keys and his shoes and doesn't ask twice. 


	13. "I forgot what hating myself felt like"

“Mr. Favreau?”

Jon jumps to his feet. He’s running on three days of vending machine dinners and styrofoam cups of thick, lukewarm coffee, and he wobbles a little on his feet. Dan steadies him, his fingers strong and warm and steadying on Jon’s bicep, just as they have been since Jon arrived, seven hours and two roadblocks after Dan called to say that Lovett had turned himself in.

“Are you coming?” Jon asks, his voice shaking to the same rhythm as his knees. He asks, without knowing what answer he wants. He asks, and watches the emotions play across Dan’s face as he counts the moments in his mind.

Sixty-eight hours and twelve minutes since he rushed into the detention center, only to be told that he’d have to wait until Lovett’s paperwork has cleared.

Seventy-five hours and thirty-nine minutes since Jon kissed Tommy goodbye and pulled onto the 101 in Lovett’s beat-up Jeep with the passenger-side window still duct-taped on.

Seventy-six hours and twenty-two minutes since Lovett succumbed to the subpoena and turned himself into the Nationalized Police Force on a murky Tuesday in mid-September.

Fifteen-hundred and eighty-eight hours since Jon dropped Lovett off at the LAX bus terminal in an attempt to keep him safe and secret. An attempt that would have been less vain if Lovett had subsumed his better angels and kept his fucking mouth shut.

So many wasted moments-

“Mr. Favreau, visiting hours are for fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes only.”

\- and Jon’s still wasting them.

Dan shakes his head, his eyes dark and tired and a smile pulled tight and twisted across his face. Jon wants to shake him. Jon wants to kiss him. Jon wants to do both of those things later.

The thick metal doors roll open with an electronic hum and Jon steps forward into the visitors’ room. It’s empty except for a small, round table and Lovett’s already there, the sleeves of his orange jumpsuit cuffed around his biceps. His ankle manacles jangle as he stands.

Jon swallows, Lovett’s name sinking into ash on his tongue.

Lovett rolls his eyes and snaps, “stop that,” as he sits back down. He places his palms flat on the table, his wrists red and raw where his handcuffs must have been.

Jon swallows again, tries for something, anything, and manages, “Lovett.”

“I know, I know, orange is not my color.” Lovett tilts his chin. His curls are shorn close to his head, the flecks of grey standing out in splotches of salt and pepper. 

Jon wonders how many are his fault, how many are Tommy’s, how many are Crooked Media’s, and how many he can lay at the feet of their crumbling democracy.

“But,” Lovett continues, trying to shrug but it’s tight and Jon can’t help but imagine the deep bruise on Lovett’s shoulder blade. “They say I get to wear a suit at my trial. I was thinking something pin-striped, maybe?”

“With a fun lining,” Jon agrees, the words sounding far away, like he’s bending time, pulling them out of a time, almost a year ago, when they could joke about fabrics and styles with a naively free conscience. “Purple polka-dots or something.”

Lovett’s eyes widen behind his glasses. There’s a crack, just at the edge, and Jon wishes he’d thought to bring Lovett’s back-up pair. “So, this is what it takes to get a little fashion-forward thinking out of you, huh?”

“A totalitarian takeover changes a man,” Jon agrees. Under the table, he presses his knee to Lovett’s.

“Yeah,” Lovett agrees, his smile slipping, a little, into artifice or ruthfulness or- It’s been over a dozen years since Jon last wasn’t able to read him and Jon hates it. He hates that he feels twenty-seven again, madly in love and so convinced that Lovett - Lovett, with his thirty-foot view and his dashing sense of humor and his blinding, hard-edged sense of right and wrong - would never choose him. If that Jon could see him now-

If that Jon could see him now, he’d say it was worth it. The riots and the police and the anger and the fear. It was all worth it, to feel Lovett press back, slotting his knee in along Jon’s.

Jon closes his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. _For loving you. For pushing you away. For not being able to save you._

“Hey, hey.” Lovett slides his hands slowly, slowly across the table and brushes his fingers against Jon’s wrist. “None of that. I don’t blame you. For anything.”

“You should.” Jon shakes his head, opening his eyes to stares at the place where their skin meets.

“How could I?” Lovett digs his fingernail into Jon’s wrist, pulling Jon’s eyes to his. “When I love you so much, I’ve forgotten what hating myself felt like?”

The guard steps forward, his hands still clasped behind his back but his biceps bulging against his Nationalized Police Force uniform. “Hands on the table.”

Lovett clears his throat. “Sorry, sir,” he offers, as he pulls his fingers away and spreads them flat against the cool, metal table.

Jon’s skin goosebumps. He glances over Lovett’s shoulder as the guard checks his watch. He’s running out of time. He’s always running out of time, lately. “Tommy wanted to be here. Even tried to fit himself into the trunk.”

Lovett laughs, a full-bodied, room-filling laugh that Jon doesn’t deserve but will bottle for as long as his memory will let him. “I wish I had seen that.”

“Yeah.” Despite himself, Jon laughs, too.

“Three minutes,” the guard calls, bored and cold.

Lovett presses his knee even closer to Jon’s, his ankle cuffs clanging as he lifts his toes to step on Jon’s. “You’ll take of yourself, yeah? Tommy’s been carrying your deadweight for long enough.”

It’s easy and loose.

Jon takes it for the reprimand that it is.

“And-” Lovett stops, breathes deeply, then pushes forward. “Dan. I know we- There’s so much we should have talked about, before. But, you’ll-”

“Yeah,” Jon promises. “Of course I will.”

Lovett lets the breath out. “Okay.” He nods, his smile slipping small and sad and Jon can read every twist and curve and turn of their lives in his mouth.

Jon’s heart feels too heavy and too full, but he waits. He waits until the guard tugs at Lovett’s elbow, pulling him willingly away from the table, away from Jon. He waits until Lovett’s back disappears into the unknown darkness of the Detention Center, his back strong and steady, his ankles shuffling as he walks away. He waits until the guard grabs his own elbow, ushers him back into the bright, artificial light of the waiting room.

He waits until Dan’s hands are around him, and then he cries.


	14. The Trial

“Your tie-”

Tommy lifts his chin, making room for Dan to tug the knot of his tie into place. Tommy’s wearing a tailored navy suit to match his red-white-and-blue tie, only a little loose around his thighs and biceps, where he’s been working for leaner, stronger muscles. In case he needs them. In case, someday, he has to run.

Dan’s hands linger on Tommy’s shoulders and Jon swallows as he looks away, out the window, across the National Mall. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the group of Congressmen kvetching down the hall, but in the distance he can just make out the Washington Monument in the distance. He tries to take comfort in that.

More comfort, at least, then he can in the Lincoln Memorial, the feet now covered in graffiti that the Trump Administration doesn’t deem fit to remove. White nationalist symbolism as _art_ and _free speech_ , at the same time as they’re imprisoning Pulitzer Prize journalists and the Poet Laureate. They saw the graffiti last night, in the small period between dusk and curfew, the setting sun illuminating the oranges and greens of the paint. Their walk of the Mall - meant to be centering and inspirational - had been anything but.

Tommy, having seen red at the Vietnam War Memorial, had taken off on a long and dangerous walk. Jon had been frozen, staring up at Lincoln, squeezing the hand Dan had slipped into his for a long, long time. Jon hadn’t started breathing again until they’d barely made it back to the hotel before curfew, to find Tommy already there, lying on his back on their bed, his eyes closed.

This morning, though, Tommy is preternaturally calm. His hands are steady as he brushes wrinkles from Dan’s suit, his smile real and small, his demeanor loose and decisive in that way Jon’s only seen a few times throughout the last decade and a half:

On the warm, sunny evening in DC when, months after they went to LA and Jon had thought _yes, maybe, it’s time_ , and weeks after he had asked Tommy to join him, Tommy had loosened his hand around his beer bottle and said “yes, okay, I’m ready, let’s leave together.”

On that terrible morning in November, with the sun beating down on their heads as they pushed Lovett’s Jeep up Sunset, Trump’s election speech playing all around them. When Tommy had leaned against the bumper to wipe at his brow and said, his voice chillingly calm, “we have to do _something_ , we have to do _this_.”

On the innocuous mid-Saturday afternoon when, months later - with Lovett lying in the grass with the dogs and a tennis ball and Jon at the bar cart, finding them a bottle of wine - Tommy had leaned back in his deck chair and said “I love you” like it was a foregone conclusion.

This is another of those moments. They’re a year and a few skirmishes into what will inevitably become the Second Civil War, with the House Chamber gleaming underfoot like an antique remnant from a different era. They’re months on from Tommy’s black mark, but in this building, this city, that’s done so much to build him up and tear him down, Tommy’s found his center again.

Behind them, the big wooden doors creak open.

Tommy squares his shoulders, leans into Dan’s touch, and catches Jon’s eyes. “Ready?” He asks, but it’s not a question. It’s a declaration. It’s a benediction.

Across the hall, though, another set of eyes are searching for Jon’s. Jon shuffles the sole of his dress shoes against the polished floor and pastes on his most casual smile. “Go on ahead, save me a seat. I’ll be in in a minute.”

Dan squints his eyes, dark and concerned, but he doesn’t fight as Tommy takes his elbow and pulls him inside. Jon slides his hands into his pockets and doesn’t watch them go.

“Mr. Favreau, what a pleasure to see you back in our nation’s capital.”

Jon sees spots of rage at the edges of his vision. “When this nation started arresting and detaining innocent civilians, it stopped being my nation, Mr. Congressman.”

“Now, now.” Darrell Issa mirrors Jon’s stance, sliding his hands into the pockets of his expensive suit and puffing out his chest. His American Flag pin slips and hangs at an odd angle on his lapel. “You know as well as I do that Jon Lovett is no innocent civilian. You saw his name on that list as clearly as I did.”

Jon frowns, fighting with himself not to loosen. “The list?”

“The blacklist.” Issa shrugs, the greasy tendrils of his hair sliding against his forehead.

Jon shrugs, every muscle tensing to keep it easy and casual.

“Wait. You didn’t-” He laughs, loud and booming in the now empty hall, his entire chest shaking with it. “What a good, Catholic boy, following directions to a tee. So worried about saving your friend, you didn’t dare read the document you stole for me.”

“Plausible deniability,” Jon whispers.

Issa chuckles again, pulling a familiar, pulpy envelope out of his pocket and handing it over. “I’m done with it now. It was really very easy to slip it to Julian Assange.”

Jon swallows, accepting the envelope with shaking fingers. He hasn’t seen it in months, but the feel and weight of it has been burned into his memory since he took it from the resistance offices and handed it to Darrell Issa in that Naval detention center in San Diego. The envelope that had bought Tommy’s freedom. The document he hadn’t read because he _didn’t want to know_.

“I applaud your dedication to the cause, I really do.” He reaches over to slap Jon on the shoulder. “If you ever wanna do business again, you know where to find me.”

Jon swallows and follows a few steps behind him as the Chamber doors start to close.

He slides into a back row, taking the empty seat between Dan and Tommy. The envelope is clutched in his fist, the damning list of names crumpling under his fingers. Like he could take it back. Like he could untrade Lovett for Tommy. Like Lovett would ever let him.

“Everything okay?” Tommy asks, leaning close, his hand warm and steady on Jon’s knee.

Jon feels rage, coursing through every muscle in his body. “In Trump adjusted terms?”

At his other side, Dan’s shoulders stiffen.

Before they can push any further, though, Devin Nunes bangs his gavel against his pedestal. “I call this 63rd session of the House Un-American Committee to order. Please, state your full name and affiliation for the record.”

The artificial light glints off his shorn hair as he leans forward. “Jonathan Ira Lovett.” He crosses his arms on the desk in front of him, the cuffs of his suit rolled at his wrists to show the polka-dots on the lining. “And I’m a member of the Democratic Party.”


	15. The Gibson

The DC chapter of the resistance is hosted by The Gibson.

When he moved to DC as a wide-eyed eighteen-year old with an inferiority complex and a Trivial Pursuit-shaped chip on his shoulder, Dan had enjoyed the pretension of political DC. He’d been enamored with the image he cut, crossing his legs as he sipped a sour cappuccino on the Hilton patio while reading his nascent Washington Post subscription. He’d been proud of the pompous lilt and flip of the wrist he adopted as he debated the role of the DCCC with his intramural kickball team in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

Now, the series of knocks and taps he uses to get them into the bar feels performative.

“We need a digs upgrade,” Tommy mutters, as he runs his hand over the gold filigree on the door jamb.

Jon’s fingers twist in his pocket, where they’ve been since Lovett’s trial began, forty-eight hours and a lifetime of grey hairs ago. He doesn’t touch.

Dan shrugs, embarrassed, and offers, “our community center chairs are rickety, but they work,” as the door opens.

The maître d’ is tall, dressed in gold leggings and an eagle t-shirt that gapes at his collarbone. His eyes widen when he sees them, but he holds his excitement back as he explains, “we’ve always been a speakeasy,” and leads them to their table, “but now we’re an official secret society. Isn’t that kismet? It’s such an honor to have the Presidents of the LA and SF chapters tonight. We’ve set aside a table just for you-”

They follow him through the tight, dark corridors to the courtyard out back. It’s open to the humid DC night, lit only by strings of tea lights and the streaks of ambient city light that manage to filter in. Their table is directly in front of the small, makeshift stage, with a perfect porcelain tablecloth held in place by a bronze eagle.

Jon slides a hip onto the uncomfortable brass stool, his shoulders tight and warry, and tries to order. “Gin and tonics, all around.”

“Oh,” the maître d’ snaps his fingers in delight. “We don’t order in here. The bartender will know just what you need.”

He returns with a round of pastel-colored drinks and a golden bourbon on the rocks for Jon. "Sounds about right,“ Jon mutters as he takes a long, shuddering sip. He reaches out to trace one of the eagle’s wings. "Lovett would hate this place.”

“Lovett would love this place,” Dan corrects.

Jon flinches. He slides his hand back into his pocket, his fist clenching around whatever invisible demons he’s kept locked inside himself for months now.

Dan frowns at him. He doesn’t know the full extent of the lengths Jon went to to save Tommy from that Naval detention center in San Diego. He only knows what Lovett told him, his voice low and choked in the hours after his subpoena came down. When he had lain with Dan, his fingers shaky and pale again Dan’s chest as he had spoken all his steely optimism into the dark of the night and then buried all his fears in Dan’s body.

Dan knows, though, that whatever Jon had traded for Tommy’s freedom, he had traded a piece of his soul with it. He can almost see it, the darkness burying deeper and deeper into Jon with every clench of his fists in his pocket. Dan’s seen this before. During the darkest days of the Obama White House, when Jon would put aside his own well-being in favor of long, sleepless, soul-crushing nights, putting so much of himself into his pen that Dan feared there would be nothing of Jon left in the morning.

Jon would do it again, for Obama. Jon would it again, for Tommy. Jon will do it again, for Lovett, if Dan doesn’t do it first.

It was Dan’s job to save Jon from himself, then. It’s Dan’s job, now.

He catches Ben Rhodes’ eyes across the room and nods, slowly.

Ben’s eyes go wide, but he nods back, before making his way, gingerly, across the room to them.

“Welcome to our humble chapter of the resistance,” he greets them, squeezing Jon’s shoulder and bumping Tommy’s.

Jon flinches again.

Tommy snorts. “I know truth doesn’t mean anything anymore, but ‘humble’? Did you lose your dictionary in the war?”

Ben shrugs. “Excuse us for enjoying the few opulences we have left.” He reaches out, using Dan’s hand to pull him into a one-armed hug. When he pulls back, there’s a clammy piece of paper in Dan’s palm.

Jon’s bickering retort fades into the background as Dan turns his shoulder, squinting at the note in the low tea lights.

_Tomorrow, 9pm. DC R Headquarters_

Dan crumbles the paper in his fist and drops it into a glass of water on a passing waiter’s tray. The waiter grumbles but doesn’t protest as he keeps walking.

“Okay, I’ve gotta get this meeting started,” Ben’s saying as Dan tunes back in. Ben squeezes Jon’s shoulder again as he steps around him and onto the stage. He taps on the microphone. “Thank you all for coming to this impromptu meeting of the resistance.” He holds up his drink. It sweats down his wrist in the humidity. “First, raise a glass to old friends, the ones who are here today and the ones who couldn’t be.”

Across the table, Tommy tries to catch Dan’s eyes.

Dan raises his glass.


	16. The Mole

"Today isn't a good day," Ben tells the gathered members of the DC resistance from his perch on the small, makeshift stage at The Gibson.

It's a dark, humid night, and the inadequate tea lights glint off his raised tumbler and illuminate the hard angles of his eyes. Jon can picture, in the deep recesses of his memory, a time when Ben was all curves and rounded edges. In Chicago or New Hampshire or Iowa. Before he split his days between the Sit Room and his basement office in the OEOB. Before Benghazi and Syria and the Arab Spring. Before late nights on his porch, talking about missteps and misfortunes and the future they've been trying to build for his daughter, as they watched the Nationalized Police patrol Logan Square with AK-47s.

Ben earned those edges long before Trump stole his second election and declared martial law. As Jon looks around at the assembled crowd now, though, he can see the same steely edges in every set of eyes.

Ben pauses to take a sip of his drink. "We've had to watch HUAC try to take down one of our own. But Jon Lovett-"

Jon's hip slides off his uncomfortable brass stool as his body physically reacts to hearing Lovett's name. He catches himself on the edge of the table, his other hand tightening around the square of paper in his pocket.

"- and the others who will come after him, are fighting so that we can keep fighting. I don't want to see any long faces tonight. Lovett would want us to prove that the resistance cannot be brought down by a leak."

The paper burns bright and hot. Jon's certain everyone can see the smoldering hole in his khaki shorts. The blazing sign that says _mole_ with a blinking arrow over his head.

_Lovett would want us to prove that the resistance cannot be brought down by a leak._

Jon's stomach lurches with the need to get to him, to come clean, to say _I'm sorry_ and _I wish it was me in your place_ and _I don't deserve you, but I did it for the right reasons and-_

Jon's bourbon revolts and he trips over his feet as he pushes away from the table and through the crowd. He doesn't hear the "hey, man, sit down" or the "hey, is that Jon Favreau?" as he shoves past shoulders and expensive leather shoes. His own white keds are stained with dirt as he stops in the hallway just outside the courtyard and digs his toe under the opulent red velvet carpet, into the crack in the floor underneath. It pinches, a white flash of pain that clears his head and settles his stomach.

Jon sees the light blue boat shoes and navy slip-ons before he feels Dan's hand on his shoulder or hears Tommy's sharp, "what the fuck is going on?"

"I-" Jon swallows, forces out, "- nothing," but it burns his throat even as he says it.

Tommy's eyes narrow into ice blue slits. "Stop lying to us."

"I'm not-" Jon stops before he can add yet another lie to the pile that's threatening to drown him. The pile that started that day at the North Island detention center. No, that started the day he purposefully ran into Darrell Issa at the Starbucks outside his Orange County palace of an office, batted his eyelashes, said, soft and quiet _I might be of use to you_ , not ever, really, expecting it to work but desperate to try. Desperate to _do_ something when he's always been the one to talk about it. Desperate to put himself on the line, to put himself into a position to face down the kind of danger Tommy and Lovett have always found themselves in naturally.

Desperate to save them but, more presciently and more selfishly, desperate to be the one to do it. Desperate to be the man who was worthy of their love.

It feels so fucking stupid now. With Tommy seconds from walking away from him and Dan's fingers tightening painfully around his shoulder, with Lovett languishing in an internment camp for political prisoners, sharing a dorm and a work schedule with Nancy Pelosi and Ta-Nehisi Coates and George Clooney.

Jon's fist tightens in his pocket as he pulls out the paper and unfolds it with shaking hands. It crinkles and cracks along the folds, the ink wearing thin but _The Blacklist_ still clear in thick, dark letters at the top.

He shoves it into Tommy's hands, surprised at how calm he is as he admits, "I'm the mole, I gave the list to Darrell Issa," and waits for the inevitable.

Dan sucks in a deep breath. His hand falls away and Jon sways for a moment, before he catches himself.

Tommy's hands don't shake as his eyes rake down the letter. Jon knows the moment he finds Lovett's name, sees it in the jerk of Tommy's shoulders and the harried fluttering of his eyelashes. His voice is cold and steady as he asks, "why?"

Jon takes a deep breath and prepares to lose everything, even as he realizes with unwavering clarity that he'd do it again, a million times over, to have Tommy here, in front of him, rather than hardening in that damn detention center. "It was the price I paid for your release."

"The price-? Fuck." Tommy takes a step back. His entire body shudders and his fist closes around The Blacklist as he raises his eyes to Jon's. His pale skin flushes as he shakes his head and says, quietly but so, so slowly, "It wasn't worth it, Jon."

Jon knew he was going to say it.

Jon knew he'd have to watch Tommy walk away.

Jon knew his, "you're worth it, Tommy, you're worth any price I have to pay," would fall on deaf ears.

He says it anyway. He watches anyway. It hurts, anyway.

He's not sure how much time passes as he sways in place and stares at the dark stairwell where Tommy last was, before Dan slides into his line of sight.

Jon steadies himself against the final blow. "Just say it."

But Dan just tilts his head. "Say what?"

"That I'm a traitor. That I betrayed the cause. That I- Fuck, that Lovett's going to die in a political death camp and it's my fault."

"That would be awfully hypocritical of me." Dan shrugs, his hands still buried deep in his pockets. In the low, red light, Jon can read all the shadows on his face, the dips and divots he's earned the hard way. "As a general rule, I don't like hypocrites."

"Dan-"

"Lovett knew. That first night, after the list leaked-" Dan's eyes widen with realization, memories Jon will never have filtering across them. Dan smiles, just a little, and shakes his head ruefully. "He didn't say, but he knew."

Jon pushes away the quick, undeserved flicker of jealousy in favor of the small promise for benediction. "I need to tell him."

"You will," Dan promises, with all Jon’s usual certainty. He takes a step forward, filling Jon's vision and filling Jon's heart.

"Don't do anything stupid," Jon tells him and, despite everything, he gives a small, newborn breath of a laugh. It feels like a phoenix, struggling to rise from the ash around his heart. "I know exactly what selling out gets you."

"The men you love," Dan shrugs, like it's a simple, inalienable truth. "I can't- it's better if you don't know. If-" Dan takes another step forward. Jon can smell the whiskey on his breath and feel the warmth of his body. "If things go south, you know what to do."

"Yeah," Jon swallows. Then, with all the love he's kept locked away for longer than he can remember, he whispers, "please, be careful."

"I will," Dan promises, as he leans forward.

His mouth is warm and soft and everything Jon has ever imagined it would be.

The fire in Jon's chest, small and fragile, flickers back to life.


	17. The Plan

Dan leaves the hotel as the sun sets.

Tommy follows him, walking a block behind, as he crosses M and P on 16th. Tommy ducks behind a taxi as Dan turns onto U. Dan stops, looking both ways, before using the same strange series of knocks he had used the night before.

Tommy ducks into Busboys and Poets, orders a beer that he doesn't have to pay for when the barista recognizes his face. He slips her a $20, anyway, and hopes it's enough to buy her silence. Not that it'll matter. Tonight's the night. 

He'll confront Dan, or he won't.

They'll save Lovett, or they won't.

The horrible price that Tommy never asked Jon to pay will prove worth it, or it won't.

Tommy clenches his fingers around the beer. He would give almost anything to be here, drinking an over-priced beer in a resistance-extension bookstore, rather than back in San Diego digging up dirt in an orange prison jumpsuit. He still hears the screams at night. He still remembers the stench of fear. He can still feel the hardened shell he'd built, callous upon callous around his heart, to protect the memory of everyone and everything he cares about from being burned alive while he was in there.

He would give almost anything. He would not give the haunted look that's settled in Jon's eyes over the past few months. Nor Lovett's freedom, traded in a devil's bargain, for Tommy's own. And certainly not whatever dangerous, hair-brained scheme Dan has been cooking up that will almost certainly end in trading both their lives for his.

_Two for one is a deal I'm willing to take_ , Tommy can already hear Dan saying.

Fuck that.

Tommy's been trading on his ill-earned freedom for months now. Flinching at shadows and hiding behind his fear of what might have been if he'd stayed in that prison cell and what might be if things get worse. But now the worst has happened and it's almost a relief to replace the fear with regret. Regret that he wasted so much time sleeping in the guest room, burying his nightmares in Lucca's fur. Regret that he returned to Jon and Lovett’s bed only to direct from the sidelines as Jon pushed Lovett to SF. Regret that safety was more important to him than savoring the last, bittersweet months they might have had.

As Tommy finishes his beer, the regret slides away. Regret is unproductive. Regret pales in light of the need - the mission he gave himself the moment Jon handed him that list - to give himself one last chance.

He's standing in front of the dark, innocuous door to The Gibson before he realizes he's slid his glass down the bar or smoothed out his shoulders. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and picturing Dan the night before, the grace of his fingers as they'd danced across the wood in a complicated knock.

Tommy is met by a harried waitress this time, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail and an American flag pinned jauntily to her vest. She doesn't invite him in, but she doesn't push him away, either, so he steps around her and into the speakeasy. It's darker and less friendly than it was twenty-four hours before, nearly empty except for the hushed voices filtering through from the courtyard.

Tommy's stealth lasts until he trips over the last step, his shoe thumping against the stone floor as he catches himself, fingernails scraping against the brick wall. He curses, inwardly. Ben curses, outwardly, as he spins around, his eyes wide and bright in the thick red lamp light.

"Tommy."

Dan doesn't turn around. He clenches his fists against the table in front of him, his shoulders slumping as he pushes forward, his elbows bowing inwards and the muscles of his back rippling under his thin blue button-down.

"Ben," Tommy nods. "Dan. I followed you."

Ben's eyes flick from Tommy to Dan, but Tommy ignores him. Dan leans his weight heavier against the table, his voice hoarse as he chuckles darkly. "No shit."

"I knew you were up to something." Tommy crosses to the table, stands close enough that he can feels the waves of heat rolling off Dan's tense shoulders. "I want to be a part of it."

"I know," Dan whispers, closing his eyes tightly. "That's why I kept you out of it."

"Dan-"

"No." The table groans as Dan raps his knuckles against it. His eyes fly open, as clear and blue as Tommy's ever seen them. "You have a black mark, Tommy. You _can't_ be a part of this."

Tommy pulls his mind away from the passport in his back pocket, the _treason_ stamped across his photo. "I don't care."

Dan shakes his head. The red light gleams off the white and grey hairs that are outnumbering the brown these days. 

"Would you like anything to drink, Mr. Vietor?" The waitress asks, appearing in the doorway. Her hair is now in a tight braid. The Flag pin is still askew.

Ben shakes his head, crossing the room to take her elbow and lead her away.

They're alone in the warm, DC fall air, and as Dan turns towards him, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, Tommy can see the beads of sweat at his hairline. "What do you think will happen, huh? If you're caught? They don't just throw you in jail for a second treason charge."

"I know." Tommy holds up a hand to hold Dan back. "Come on, you know I know that. Don't treat me like an idiot."

"Then don't act like one," Dan snaps back. "Someone has to look after your fucking life, as you seem awfully hell-bent on throwing it away."

Tommy flinches. He burned his enlistment application months ago. He burned his handgun application with it. The reasons he had them in the first place did not burn along with the paper. "Life isn't worth living," Tommy spits back, "without Lovett in it. Not that you'd understand that."

Dan's eyes widen and he takes a step back, jerking against the edge of the table, good as if Tommy had slapped him.

"We've been waiting," Tommy continues. "For fucking years, Dan. Loving and waiting while you've been- what?"

Dan's voice is so low that Tommy has to strain to hear it. "Making the world safe for you."

Tommy sighs in exasperation. They've been having this argument, in metaphors and similes, for long enough that Tommy's heart has started to close over the hole he's left, open and waiting, for Dan to fill. "Newsflash, the world isn't safe. It's not going to be. All we have is this moment, right here, right now. We have-" he swallows, realizing the words are true only as he says them, "forgiveness for Jon and an opportunity to save Lovett. And we have each other."

Dan swallows, his adam's apple thick in the open vee of his shirt. "Lovett would want you alive."

"You too, Dan," Tommy corrects. "What the fuck do you _still_ not understand about that?"

"I can't- Tommy, fuck, I can't _do_ this right now. Lovett needs _me_ to be thinking straight. You- He needs _you_."

Tommy reaches out, tugging at Dan's crossed arms and pulling him a step closer. "He needs you, too. Just you. That's all any of us have ever asked for."

Dan's face twists. His eyes are shining, bright and wet. "I have to try."

"I know," Tommy whispers, closing the distance between them. 

Dan's lips taste like salt. He smells like sweat and fear. He melts into Tommy's chest and Tommy's mouth, and the fourth chamber of Tommy's heart beats wildly against his rib cage, reaching out towards Dan, like it always has. For the first time in over a decade, he feels Dan’s beating in response.

Tommy pulls away, just far enough to press his lips behind Dan's ear. "Let me help." Dan shakes under his hands and Tommy spreads his fingers against the base of Dan's spine. "Let me help keep you alive. For Lovett." He presses his lips to Dan's clammy skin in a close-mouthed kiss. "For Jon." Again. "For me." And again.

Dan's entire body shudders, and Tommy loses track of time as they stand there. Under the DC night sky, the stars and the artificial tea lights, with Dan's beer warming at his elbow and Dan's walls thawing in his arms.

When Ben appears in the doorway, though, his shoulder pressed against the worn wood and a soft, concerned smile on his face, Tommy squeezes the back of Dan's neck. "Tell me the plan."

"Okay." Dan steps back, straightening his shirt and glancing away, hiding the flush of his cheeks and the warm blue of his eyes. He smooths his hands over the table top and the building plans crinkle under his fingers. "These are the plans for-"

Tommy leans closer, his shoulder tight against Dan's as Ben joins them. He squints in the dim light, until he can read the name in the corner.

Tommy gasps.

"-Devin Nunes' office."


	18. Release

Prison smells like mold.

Prison is a feast for the senses. It's loud and stuffy. Even with the earplugs he bought with his first hard-earned pennies, the crash of dishes and clank of manacles and the talking, the endless talking, run on an unrelenting loop in Lovett's mind. His skin crawls with it, day and night. When he isn't already itching from the steel wool blanket on his bunk or the dull razor he's been using, ineffectually, for weeks now. When he isn't itching with the invisible eyes that follow him, everywhere, always. The fish eye cameras in the mess, the drones in the yard, the small, blue light in the urinals. It makes Lovett's muscles - already aching from the digging and the sunburn and the continual, never-ending, inescapable rubbing of elbows with his fellow prisoners - clench and twist and burn.

It's the mold, though, that he can't stand.

Lovett digs his fork into the patch of blue and green on his muffin. His yogurt sits, half-eaten, at his elbow.

The loudspeaker crackles to life. "Prison 1359."

Conor Lamb, formerly of the PA-17, nods at the muffin Lovett's mutilating. "You gonna eat that?"

The loudspeaker crackles again. "Prisoner 1359, please report to the nearest guard."

Lovett fiddles with his left earplug. He pushes the muffin across the table. "It's all yours."

"Prisoner 1359." Lovett feels a heavy hand on his shoulder and he blinks upwards. The fluorescent lights blind him, but he knows he's looking at a buzz cut around a square face, muscles that haven't smiled in years. "Didn't you hear your name being called?"

Lovett motions helplessly at his earplugs.

The guard grunts, pulling on the back of Lovett's scratchy black jumpsuit until he stumbles over the bench. He scrapes his knee on the metal, grimacing as he gets his feet under him enough to pull out of the guard's grasp. "What is this about?"

"Don't ask," the guard snears, "don't tell."

Lovett rolls his eyes. "I wrote the speech, you know? Repealing that."

He sees the nightstick before he feels it, thick and painful, on the back of his knees.

He stumbles, catching himself on the doorjamb of the small room the guard pushes him into. He shoves a stack of clothes into Lovett's arms, "put these on," and turns his back. He doesn't close the door.

Lovett doesn't remove his earplugs before he automatically reaches for the hem of his shirt. His self-consciousness fell by the wayside months ago, lying in that detention center in San Francisco next to the life he’s worked so hard to build for himself and his hope for a future outside the four walls of this prison, and he strips before he looks at the clothes in his arms. He freezes.

The Be A Hero shirt and maroon pants he wore the day he kissed Dan goodbye and turned himself in. They're clammy, a little cold, clingy as he pulls them on. He feels vulnerable, like a fraud in someone else's body, stripped of all the callouses and walls he'd left behind in San Francisco and stripped now, too, of the new edges and coping mechanisms he's adopted under his jumpsuit.

He reaches for his Swing Left hat, ready to hide his shorn, greying head under it, when the guard steps forward. "Not the hat."

Lovett drops the hat to his side and follows the guard put into the hallway. It feels brighter, louder, more obscene.

Lovett flinches, and continues flinching until the guard opens the door and shoves him, not into the tan prisoner vans he's used to, but a long, black Suburban with DC license plates. The door closes behind him, and Lovett's world is blessedly, impossibly quiet. 

The way Lovett's dreamed of it.

The way Lovett's always known it will be, at the end.

He leans his head back against the headrest, as Virginia rolls by, giving way to DC and, eventually, to the Maryland border. When Lovett first left home, his parents warned him that nothing good comes out of DC, and they may- in the end, they may be right. There's, inevitably, nothing but a firing squad awaiting him at the end of this drive, but as he looks out the tinted windows at the shadows of the capital rushing by, he can't help but send out a thank you to the city that, so many years ago, brought him the men who have pieced him together.

He lets his eyes slide closed as he remembers the last time he saw them. Tommy, his face flushed and his hair in disarray, his biceps straining around Lovett's ears as he begged Lovett not to forget him, with his body, if not his words. Dan, who swallowed Lovett's _finally_ , traded it for _I love you, I've loved you, always_ , who told Lovett he understood even as he kissed him, hands shaky and eyes wet, outside the nondescript detention center. Jon, knee pressed to Lovett's in the prison in SF, his eyes asking for the forgiveness Lovett was willing to give the moment Jon was ready to accept it.

Lovett doesn't open his eyes as the car rolls to a stop. He doesn't open his eyes as careless fingers tie a blindfold around his head. He doesn't open his eyes as he's dragged onto the humid concrete and tied, roughly, to a bike rack. He doesn't open his eyes as he hears the car pull away.

He squeezes his eyes closed, and waits for the click of the hand gun.

He squeezes his eyes closed, and waits.

And waits.

He squeezes his eyes closed and he counts the minutes and he waits.

And waits.

He hears the screech of tires, the scuffle of shoes. He squeezes his eyes closed, straightens his shoulders, and-

His breath catches.

He never thought he'd hear those voices again.

He never thought he'd feel those hands again.

He never thought he'd see those faces again.

This must be-

He only has time to whisper "goodbye" before Tommy is pulling him into a wet, uncoordinated kiss.

"It's gonna be goodbye if we don't get the fuck out of here," he hears Dan grit out over his shoulder, as his nails scrape against Lovett's wrists, the knots slowly, slowly loosening.

Lovett feels like he's floating, his mind wet and loose, spilling out over the walls he no longer has. He only has time to ask, "how?", before he dips forward, losing control of his body and letting Tommy catch his weight.

He hears "blackmail" and "Devin Nunes" and "no more Bond movies for anyone in this fucking household" as he's lifted into the idling sedan.

He can hear Jon suck in a breath as he starts the car.

Lovett squeezes his eyes closed.


	19. Forgiveness

Jon's quarter slides through the coffee machine and back out again. Jon sighs, digging it out of the slot and turning it over. Canadian. Figures.

"If you're not going to buy anything-" The irate passenger behind him taps his foot, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, sorry, I-" Jon steps back, twisting the quarter between his fingers. "I don't have the right change."

The man rolls his eyes and steps around him. Jon recognizes him, from the dining car, where - less than twelve hours into their three-day train ride to Los Angeles - he yelled at the waiter for not understanding the difference between over easy and sunny-side up. Lovett had flinched at the noise, pushing his earphones further into his ears and pulling the hood of his sweatshirt down his forehead.

Lovett hasn't been to the dining car again.

Jon makes sure to step on the man's toes as he turns, making his deliberately slow way back to their private cabin. Through the window, he watches as Lovett laughs, his palm spread wide and only a little shaky on Dan's chest. He's clean shaven after the half dozen showers he took that first day, his skin pink and lively. Jon knows he's hiding bruising under his layers and layers of clothes, but only a hint shows between the neck of his t-shirt and the hood he still has drawn and tied under his chin. He looks good. He looks better than Jon does.

"If you look that hard, you have to buy it," Tommy says, stepping up beside him.

"I already bought it," Jon growls, before letting his shoulders slump against Tommy's. "I just don't know if he'll let me, ahh- take him home? This metaphor sucks."

Tommy laughs. "Valiant effort though."

Jon snorts.

"Talk to him," Tommy orders then, before Jon can protest any more, slides the door open.

"Maybe," Lovett's saying, as his fingers curl into Dan's soft t-shirt, "don't blackmail the head of HUAC and you might sleep with a clearer conscience."

"Maybe," Dan parrots, catching their eyes over Lovett's heads, "someone can snore a little quieter and I might sleep at all."

"Hey," Tommy protests.

Lovett laughs, pulling away from Dan and into himself, his shoulders folding inwards. The sound is thin and loose but almost - almost - like Jon hears it in his memories.

Jon flips the Canadian quarter between his fingers. "Coffee machine won't take my quarters."

Dan nods, not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is, at Tommy. "Tommy and I'll make a dining car run."

Lovett taps Dan's knee with his knuckles. "Get me a diet coke?"

"Course." Dan slides off the bench. He wraps his fingers around Tommy's elbow and the door swishes shut behind them.

Lovett tugs at a loose thread in the hem of his sweatshirt.

Jon tugs at the loose threads of his heart.

"You've been avoiding me."

"I-" Jon starts, then takes a deep, shuddering breath, and stops. He's done enough lying to last a lifetime. Enough is enough.

He sits down next to Lovett, a few inches between them, but the seat still warm with Dan's body heat. "I didn't know what to say. I don't know how-"

Lovett looks at him for the first time in the nearly forty-eight hours since he was rescued. Since they found him tied to a bike rack on the third floor of a non-descript parking garage in Maryland, just as Devin Nunes promised he would be. Since he buried his fingers in Tommy's t-shirt and refused to open his eyes. Since he flinched at the smallest of sounds and Dan decided, rightly, that they shouldn't get on a plane and, instead, directed Jon to Union Station and the first train out of DC.

Since Jon looked at him and wanted. Wanted to touch him and kiss him and tell him everything. Since Jon held back, and kept holding back, clinging on to these last moments before he has to give Lovett a reason not to love him any longer.

Jon swallows past the flash across Lovett's face, more open and more expressive than Jon has ever seen it. "There are some things I have to tell you."

Lovett blinks, like he's trying to close a shaky barrier over his eyes. "I know."

Jon looks away, out at the cornfields rushing past them. He wants to reach out, touch Lovett one last time, while he still can, while Lovett will still let him. He keeps his hands folded in his lap. "I'm the reason you went to prison."

Lovett tilts his head. "That's not _quite_ how I'd put it."

"I gave the list to Darrell Issa," Jon pushes.

"Well, that's true."

"And Issa gave the list to Assange," Jon continues, because he has to, because if he doesn't he never will.

Lovett shrugs. "That I believe."

"I-" Jon looks at Lovett, his vision blurring around the image of him, this Lovett - this calm, steady, centered Lovett, with shorn hair and a black hoodie and no barriers - sliding together with the Lovett he remembers - the Lovett with sharp edges, passion overflowing through his dark, wild curls and the bright spark of his hands. "I traded your life for Tommy's."

Lovett reaches out, placing his hand, palm up, on the bench between them. "That's a false equivalence."

"Stop."

Lovett freezes, his fingers clenching. Jon looks, regretfully, at the way his hand closes around air, wanting nothing more than to put his hand there, but-

"Don't do this," Jon whispers. "Be angry at me. Yell. Rage. Whatever, just- just don't act like it doesn't matter."

Lovett's breath catches. "It matters," he promises, voice soft. "It matters, of course it matters."

Jon feels tears at the corners of his eyes. He doesn't blink them away.

"I'm glad you did it. If you hadn't, I would have."

Jon squeezes his eyes closed.

"In fact," Lovett chuckles a little, dark and serious and ridiculous, "I did do it. And I'd do it again, a million times over, if there was the smallest chance it would save you."

Jon chokes.

"I am furious with you, though," Lovett continues, reaching out, again, and unfurling his fingers. This time, Jon meets him halfway, their hands touching in a soft gust of air, warm and light and aching. "I knew what I was doing when I turned myself in. I knew I'd never see you again. I knew it was worth it, if it gave you a chance to save this country.”

Jon squeezes Lovett’s hand until his knuckles are pale. “Lovett.”

“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Lovett shakes his head, his cheeks flushed with color. “But if you had failed, none of it would have mattered.”

“It was worth that risk.” Jon tugs at his hand, pulls him as close as Lovett will let him. “You’ve always been worth the risk.”

Lovett’s shoulders tense, then relax. He closes his eyes against Jon’s chest.

“So,” Jon pushes, his heart already thawing, but needing Lovett to say it, out loud, with his words as well as his body. “I’m forgiven?”

“Nothing to forgive,” Lovett mutters then, when Jon pinches him, he rolls his eyes and adds, “but, if you need me to say it, fine, I forgive you for a crime you didn’t commit.”

Jon chuckles as the door swishes open again. Tommy dumps a pile of sandwiches and Doritos on the bench and Jon catches Dan’s eye with a small, grateful smile. He mouths _thank you_ and Dan flushes, ducking his head to hand Lovett a Pepsi.

“They didn’t have Coke,” he explains.

Lovett sighs loudly, shifting so he can press his shoulder into Jon’s chest and slide his feet under Dan’s thighs. “The greatest casualty of the Second Civil War.”

Tommy settles next to Jon, opening a sandwich wrapper and handing Jon half. “Sure. Loss of civil liberties, unfettered racism and misogyny, and less choices at the soda fountain.”

Lovett pops open the Pepsi. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

“Mine,” Dan says, wistfully, “is basketball.”

“Dunkin Donuts,” Tommy moans.

Lovett elbows Jon’s ribs and he shrugs. “I’m good.”

Tommy groans. Lovett rolls his eyes.

“Fine, fine.” Jon tosses around for something, anything, and settles on, “tennis balls. For Leo.”

Lovett groans, but settles further against Jon’s chest.

Jon presses a kiss to the top of his head and watches Nebraska whip by out the window. When they get back to LA, they’re still going to have plenty of crosses to bear. They need to pivot Crooked Media to withstand the administration’s tightening controls on the Dark Web. They need to build and strengthen the resistance and find new ways to keep members engaged and fighting. They need to prepare for the - perhaps inevitable - slippage from martial law into an all out Second Civil War.

Jon’s not naive enough to hope that Lovett’s words of forgiveness will stem the tide of nightmares. Tommy still has them, months on, and Dan’s already had his fair share in the few nights they’ve shared a bed in DC. Jon knows that Lovett will need time and space to rebuild himself, and that they’ll all need support and patience, for each other and their mission.

This may have only been the first battle of the war, but it was theirs. And, sitting here, with Lovett laughing against his chest as he intercepts the bag of chips Tommy tries to toss to Dan, Jon feels strong enough to face all the battles to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come find me on [Tumblr](http://stainyourhands.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
